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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
New Poll Shows Harris Wipes Out Trump's Lead, Race Now A Dead Heat; Trump Calls Harris A Bum As New Polls Show A Dead Heat; Sen. J.D. Vance Doubles Down On Remarks About Childless Women; Trump Ally Warns Leftists Who Are Turning Kamala Harris Into A God-Like Or MLK Figure; Liberals Labeled Trump And Allies As Weird. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired July 26, 2024 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: she was a bum three weeks ago.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST: -- Donald Trump's pivot to Kamala Harris includes red meat --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I couldn't care less if I mispronounce it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: -- and the aid of a foreign ally.
Also --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I've got nothing against cats.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: -- J.D. Vance's attempt at leaving the litter box only digs deeper.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: And the substance of what I said, I'm sorry, it's true.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Plus, as Kamala Harris' past remarks resurface under the spotlight, MAGA's wise men say, only fools rush in.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Transform them into a god-like figure.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: And, a V.P. contender delivers a blunt message for the right.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. JOSH SHAPIRO (D-PA): Stop shit talking America.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Live at the Table, S.E. Cupp, Matt Welch, Jamal Simmons, and Mike Dubke.
Welcome to a special edition of NewsNight, State of the Race.
Good evening, I'm Abby Phillip in New York.
Let's get right to what America is talking about. Vice President Kamala Harris is erasing Donald Trump's lead in a stunning turn of events for this election. This race is a statistical dead heat now in two or more new polls that are out, including in three key swing states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Our panel is here in New York. We made it to Friday, folks. And suddenly between Sunday, when Joe Biden was the nominee, and today we have Kamala Harris and essentially a tied race.
S.E. CUPP, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes it's important to watch those battleground states and in some of them, the ones you didn't mention, Arizona, Georgia, things are not looking as good.
But, listen, the enthusiasm and excitement around Kamala Harris is huge. It's a different race. It feels different. Now, whether that's temporary or lasting, we'll have to see. I have a feeling there's sort of a temporary sugar eye right now, and she hasn't quite had a chance to lay out an agenda. She hasn't really had to defend a record yet. That will all, you know, play out.
But the enthusiasm and excitement at being able to vote for someone who is not an octogenarian, who doesn't make you nervous, who doesn't make you afraid, and I'm talking about both guys, right, is palpable.
MIKE DUBKE, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: I thought you were just talking about the Biden campaign.
CUPP: No, I'm talking about both guys.
DUBKE: They're afraid of what he's going to say.
CUPP: No. I mean, I'm for sure talking about Trump as well, who's scary and doesn't make a lot of sense and turns a lot of people off. To have someone in the race, whether you like or not, that people think, well, this is fresh and new and exciting, you can sense that. It's palpable. PHILLIP: Yes. Just to put some meat on the bones of the, on the polling, the Fox News polling, which has the state by state breakdown. This is the blue wall, right? Just for starters, the blue wall, it's Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. In Pennsylvania, it's an even race, dead even between Trump and Kamala Harris. In Michigan, it's an even race, dead even between Trump and Kamala Harris. In Wisconsin, Trump has a slight advantage. Basically, this is within the margin of error, so no clear leader here. And in Minnesota, Harris is at 52 percent and Donald Trump is at 49 percent. I think that is -- I think it's reversed in the graphic there. But in Minnesota --
JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: If that was the actual number, I'd be in a (INAUDIBLE) tearful state in Minnesota.
PHILLIP: It's reversed in the polling. But the point is, those are the states that really will matter. I mean, they can expand to the Sun Belt to your point, Mike, but they don't have to. They don't have to if they can compete.
DUBKE: They don't have to if they can compete in those three states and the blue wall holds and they and they win in the other locations. But it's still an incredibly tight race to get to 270, even with the blue wall. So, I've been -- I mean, I see two pathways to victory for the vice president here or for former President Trump, and that's the blue wall for her, that we just talked about or this, I call it the southern smile, going North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.
So, there are some strategic decisions this campaign needs to make and where they put her.
[22:05:00]
I think they've made the decision early on that they're going to put her -- she's been in Wisconsin, Indiana and a couple of other locations.
CUPP: Lots in Georgia.
PHILLIP: Yes.
DUBKE: And they're going to have to make a decision where she's going to be.
They also now have the money to spend in all of these states. But, you know, this is a race that comes down to nine states.
SIMMONS: Yes. Here's the secret of this, where we are right now. Democrats have come home. One of the big problems for President Biden was that he had a big drop off with young people, in particular African-Americans. He was only in like the high 50s with African- Americans. That is an unsustainable number for a Democratic candidate. So, getting that number, I think we're seeing Kamala Harris now in the high 70s, approaching 80 percent, that number needs to get closer to 88 percent. But that's a lot of room to make up in four days.
Keep also in mind that this is at the end of the Republican National Convention. There were supposedly four days of nonstop advertising for the Republicans. They should be at their highest ever sort of bump right now. And, really, what you're seeing is an even race and the Democrats have just started campaigning and advertising for Kamala Harris. We haven't even really seen her -- seen them go in big on Kamala Harris advertising.
There might be a lot of room to grow. She'll pick a V.P. candidate. She'll go into the convention. And then we'll go off for the rest of the fall. There's a lot of room left here.
PHILLIP: Here's what has not happened over the last few days. She has not sat for an interview.
CUPP: Exactly.
PHILLIP: She's done a lot of friendly crowds. Some of these were pre- planned events.
SIMMONS: She's riding the tiger. Why would she sit for an interview?
CUPP: It's been five days.
(CROSSTALKS)
MATT WELCH, EDITOR AT LARGE, REASON: We heard a lot about her cooking and her like cuddly style. We haven't heard a lot. About her explaining ways in which she's sort of flip flopped the positions that she had when she ran for president in 2019. She came out today and said that she's now opposed to a fracking ban, which is good for I think me in America. I think fracking bans are silly, but that was the position that she had in 2019.
I would like to see her explain the journey that she has made ideologically and policy-wise on criminal justice, especially legalizing marijuana, which she likes to do now. Great for me, but she used to, you know, throw 2,000 people in jail in California when she was attorney general. She hasn't had to answer for any of that.
And, yes, we will -- you know, there's Democrats have a lot to play. They have got -- you know, Kamala Harris can go out. That doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be great for Kamala Harris. She hasn't shown, at least from my point of view, that she is a successful retail politician. She won in California. Yes, but California is a blue state. It's pretty easy. You got to get to the primary. I'm not sure that extended exposure to Kamala Harris is great for Kamala Harris. So, there might be a ceiling on her ability to not annoy America.
SIMMONS: Well, keep in mind, it's a general election campaign. And a general election campaign is mostly T.V. ads and rallies, right? You got a little retail you have to do, but this is really, you know, we're going wholesale at this point. The retail part of this election is really over.
PHILLIP: I would also argue -- I mean, look, she had -- over the course of just this past week, she had a black male voters call that was like, what, 50,000 people, black women, white women last night, 150,000 people. They raised over $8 million.
SIMMONS: 168, 000 people. It was almost 170. It was really off the charts.
PHILLIP: I mean, I guess what I'm saying is like, yes, retail is important, but it seems like this campaign is also just changing in the way the organizing is happening and the way the energy is being demonstrated.
DUBKE: This is a high watermark, I think, for her campaign. I really do. This is the best week she's going to ever have. They haven't really taken a look at her record. We haven't talked about all the things and we haven't even talked about immigration yet. So, there is a point at which the media and others are going to start taking a serious look at her rather than just this historic figure.
And to the clip that you played earlier, at some point there is going to be coming -- that the Democrats are going to come down off of this sugar high. There was such depression amongst the Democratic Party that Joe Biden was going to be the nominee and that we're going to lose. And there's a possibility we're not going to gain a majority in the House. And all of these things were happening. And then Kamala Harris comes along and everyone gets excited and hope is eternal. And this is the best week they could have. And then reality sets in.
PHILLIP: Well, we'll see. We'll see if reality sets in. I do want to play a little bit of what Donald Trump has been up to tonight, because he seems to really be struggling the most with the sugar high, perhaps that the Democrats are having. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: She was a bum three weeks ago. She was a bum, a failed vice president in a failed administration with millions of people crossing. And she was the border czar. Now, they're trying to say she never was the borders. She had nothing to do with the border.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: I mean, honestly, when he gets to that place, you just have to wonder, what's going on in his mind?
[22:10:00]
He sounds irritated.
CUPP: Yes.
PHILLIP: Maybe worried a little bit.
CUPP: Yes. What was happening prior to Joe Biden dropping out was Chris LaCivita was running a very disciplined campaign, very smart campaign, a real campaign with a ground game and discipline, right, convincing Trump, you should probably back away from 2025, whether you mean it or not, and he did. Let's not dance on Joe Biden's grave right after the debate, which he didn't. I mean, for some reason, he got Trump to be disciplined. And through the RNC, it was great. Trump was the worst part of the RNC, in fact, because he wasn't disciplined.
Now, that Joe Biden is out and the candidate they had constructed this finely tuned campaign around is no longer at the center of it, they don't really know how to message against Kamala Harris yet. They don't know the attacks. Calling her a bum doesn't really mean anything. We get you don't like her, but what does it mean? How are you defining her?
PHILLIP: But like the arguments against Vice President Harris are there. It's just that Trump is not doing it.
CUPP: No, he's sort of getting there, calling her very liberal, talking about the flip flopping, that she owns Joe Biden's agenda, it's in there. But he muddies it up with other stuff that doesn't make sense. Add on to that, and I know we're going to talk about him, add on to that J.D. Vance's weirdness.
PHILLIP: Yes, we have much more to talk about.
CUPP: The weirdness, and it's not a disciplined message against Kamala Harris. They haven't figured it out yet.
SIMMONS: So, I'm laughing because what is the failed vice president. What's a successful vice president look like? I mean, like how do you really know what a (INAUDIBLE) vice president, right? So, the idea is you're a pimp, you're not Gladys Knight. So, you want to make sure you're always singing the president's song. And that's what the vice president --
WELCH: Al Gore had a pretty successful vice presidency.
SIMMONS: So, how'd that work out, right?
WELCH: Regardless of --
SIMMONS: I was there.
WELCH: But, I mean, he actually did things as vice president. It's possible to be effective. No one that I've ever seen has portrayed her vice presidency as effective. They portrayed it actually as a very shambolic sort of organization, incredibly high turnover, all kinds of backbiting, similar to her campaign in 2020.
SIMMONS: Here's what she's been doing, which I think is, I think is helpful to keep in context. The campaign in 2020 didn't have the greatest results. It was actually the campaign in 2019, because it never made it to 2020, right? But then what happened was Dobbs. And the Republicans overreached so much when we got to Dobbs and they removed the right to abortion for American women. And it's like the vice president clicked in on this very quickly and saw what this meant for American women and saw what it meant for American families. And she started talking about it every single day. So, that was a time when I was there.
And I remember struggling trying to find like how we're going to hone in some message. When Dobbs happened, it was like a shift occurred. And what we've seen over the last year-and-a-half is the vice president was very different, two years, very different than the one I think people saw prior to that. And she's been really clicking in on this for a long time. The Democrats did very well in 2022.
PHILLIP: Yes. And I should note tonight, Trump talked about abortion. He talked about exceptions for abortion bans. And he was booed by his Republican audience, so just to give you a sense of how this is going to go.
Everybody stand by for us. Coming up next, we've been talking about him, J.D. Vance, and he finally responds to the backlash over his cat lady comments. But he also doubles down on childless Americans. We have a special guest joining us in our fifth seat at the table. Stand by for that.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:17:55]
PHILLIP: J.D. Vance adding more fuel to the fire tonight, doubling down on his remarks about childless cat ladies.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment. I've got nothing against cats. I've got nothing against dogs. I've got one dog at home and I love him, Megyn. But, look, this is not -- people are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said. And the substance of what I said, Megyn, I'm sorry, it's true. It is true that we become anti-family. It is true that the left has become anti- child.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Joanna Coles joins the table. She's the chief content officer at The Daily Beast. Joanna, welcome. Childless cat ladies, and that clean up, I mean, what did you make of it?
JOANNA COLES, CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER, THE DAILY BEAST: Where do we begin with J.D. Vance? I do think there is the moment now. I mean, the internet is still so full of memes about him. Everybody is laughing at him. I actually wonder if he's now -- if we can have the conversation, is he the Sarah Palin of this campaign. It's very difficult to get back from the levels of humor now being created about him.
And the Democrats' response that he's weird, he is weird. And that only works if someone's weird. If I say you're weird or you're weird, it doesn't -- well, you're a little weird, but it doesn't really work. It works with him because he's a little strange. He's a little off. And I think it's sort of fascinating. And his doubling down on it is crazy.
PHILLIP: The Sarah Palin of it all is really interesting because there was something impetuous about the Sarah Palin decision, right, that actually really hurt John McCain.
WELCH: But not at first.
CUPP: No, it actually energized the campaign at first, right?
WELCH: Absolutely.
PHILLIP: Sure.
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: But also all it took was an interview or two, and then it all came crashing down.
COLES: Well, and it took Tina Fey, too. Remember when she did the imitation of I can see Russia from my house? And then suddenly the whole nation realized she was not ready to be vice president.
WELCH: And the vetting process didn't really happen too much with Sarah Palin's very infamous for that.
[22:20:03]
I think we might see something a little bit with J.D. Vance that is similar right now. I mean, there's been two pieces already in Politico and Axios, at the very least, that have the Republican knives are coming out already.
PHILLIP: Yes. Let me play some of that. This is from two kind of strong voices on the right talking about the J.D. Vance pick.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Speaking of errors that Republicans are going to have to avoid, so J.D. Vance is the vice presidential nominee for President Trump. Now, if you had a time machine, if you'd go back two weeks, would he have picked J. D. Vance again? I doubt it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The attacks on her personally, on whatever her past personally may have been, or calling her a childless lady, none of those are going to work, and they're going to make women second guess their support for what they may have felt for Donald Trump. Bad move.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Matt, I interrupted you. Go ahead.
WELCH: J.D. Vance ran worse in Ohio than any Republican by a lot.
PHILLIP: Yes.
WELCH: If you think about it, he's been palling around with a kind of neo reactionary Peter Thiel-like rights. The other person who did that, and received a ton of money, like eight figures, the other person who did that the last senatorial go round was Blake Masters in Arizona.
PHILLIP: Who, by the way, defended the childless cat lady.
WELCH: Of course he did, because Blake Masters is a weirdo, even weirder than I am. And if you can't win a Republican Senate seat in Arizona, you're doing something wrong.
There is this little world of too online, kind of edge lordy, we're against the enlightenment, har har type of people that Peter Thiel, and others have been palling around with for a long time, Curtis Yarvin and so on, J.D. Vance is kind of new to that world, he's been kind of playing around and they love to edge lord and go to the edge, there is so much out there that he has said that is nonsense, that he's going to have to wear. That's a lot worse than cat ladies, and it's a lot worse than some of the things that people are making up about him.
CUPP: But let me -- I think I can sort of, put a finer point on weird, if I may. He's sort of doing like a, a Duolingo version of what he thinks Republicans want to hear. And it's a bit -- it sounds lost in translation. Like the childless thing would still be weird, but it would work if there was an existing sort of idea of this in conservative circles, an idea that people should have more kids. And if you don't have kids, you're evil and you don't get a voice. That's actually not a thing.
PHILLIP: You should be penalized --
CUPP: You should be punished.
PHILLIP: -- by the tax code.
CUPP: That's not real. I mean, there's plenty of scholarship around declining population and declining birth rates. That's not really what he's talking about. He's talking about punishing people who don't currently have kids. And that doesn't exist inside conservative orthodoxy. So, he's not hitting on something that voters are already thinking. It just sounds off. Like he's almost saying the thing that you would be red meat, but he's not. And so it sounds bizarre and not -- we don't even know who it's appealing to.
SIMMONS: But, I mean, it's also like he -- it's not just weird, but it also doesn't have electricity. I mean, the thing about Donald Trump is he's kind of mean, but he's electric, right? And so when he's on television, you're compelled to get to the power of the internet.
PHILLIP: You know, he's always touching on something a little bit true that, you know -- that's the Trump secret sauce.
SIMMONS: And so watching him at the Republican Convention, I was just sitting there the entire time in my kitchen while I was watching this thing. It's like, this is J.D. boring. I mean, it's just so not fun. And then they started showing Donald Trump's face. And Donald Trump didn't look like a boss who was taking pleasure in his new employee. He didn't look like a father who was, you know, pleased with his child. He looked like, oh, what did I do?
CUPP: Maybe he was mad at his favorite child. SIMMONS: Because Trump, he's a producer. And I think he realized this was not good television and he had to live with this guy for three more months.
COLES: And I think the fact that Jennifer Aniston came out and put on her Instagram that, you know, she very much hoped that J.D. Vance never had a female child who couldn't have babies because he was trying to withdraw IVF too meant that this story in particular cuts through the sort of political punditry into the bigger population. And for people who don't care about politics until the week before the election, Jennifer actually saying something hugely influential. She has 50 million followers on Instagram.
And we actually at The Beast, we've got a childless cat lady power list because there are so many women who are proud --
PHILLIP: Taylor Swift.
COLES: Taylor Swift, Joyce Carol Oates, who's got many more readers and has written many more books than J.D. Vance. Martha Stewart has a daughter, but she's got an honorary mention, Karl Lagerfeld.
WELCH: We fact checked the cats.
COLES: We fact checked the cats. We've even got the breed of each cat.
But he's strangely unable to read the tone, because young people now also -- there was just new research that came out from, from the Pew Center this week actually that young people don't want to have kids right now.
DUBKE: Almost 50 percent.
COLES: Right.
DUBKE: Almost 50 percent.
[22:25:00]
COLES: Surprisingly high.
SIMMONS: That's exactly what he's doing.
DUBKE: Right. And he was chosen to just hang around the Great Lakes. And that blue wall that we talked about earlier, he's supposed to be in Pennsylvania. He's supposed to be in Wisconsin. He's supposed to be in Michigan. So, is what they chose J.D. Vance to do and make sure that that wall did not fall.
PHILLIP: So, I mean, look, the talk of replacing him, I think it's a little fanciful, but, you know, we just --
DUBKE: Like replacing a presidential nominee?
SIMMONS: Business Insider did an entire story about rule nine, which is how the Republicans did it. PHILLIP: I mean, Mike, do you think that, first of all, it wasn't a mistake and should Republicans roll the dice and try again?
DUBKE: Look, at the end of the day, I don't think the vice presidential pick actually matters. I really don't.
CUPP: Unless it's J.D. Vance. And then I think it actually does.
DUBKE: I'm not sure. I don't think that John McCain lost the race because of Sarah Palin. I think the last time it maybe mattered was 1960 with Johnson and swaying Texas to Kennedy.
So, this is great for late night television, this is great for our conversations, but at the end of the day, I don't know that it matters. It probably is upsetting to President Trump if he feels like, as you put it, a producer made a bad decision, but it's not going to affect the outcome of the election.
PHILLIP: I mean, it seems like it's --
SIMMONS: Here's how the Sarah Palin choice mattered. It mattered because it was a window into John McCain's decision making.
DUBKE: Yes.
SIMMONS: And that he was running on country first, and here he did not put the country first. He put politics first.
And so here's Donald Trump, who were, you know, ultimately electing somebody with some judgment. And the person he chose was a weird person who thinks the rest of us who aren't having kids at 24 years old are doing something wrong.
COLES: But it also matters because Donald Trump is 78. And he looked -- you know, we saw that he was fragile, obviously, after being shot at. And he may well have post-traumatic stress syndrome, which actually 90 percent of people who've been shot at do.
So, not surprising, but he's 78 years old. It's possible that the vice president becomes president. It's not fanciful to think about.
CUPP: And it's also just this -- you know, again, I know conservative voters in these states that he is meant to speak to. And they're going to church and Bible study and they're praying for their friends who can't have kids or in their third round of IVF or desperate to adopt. This is not resonating. And the fact that he is having to explain it and is defending it instead of just backing away from it to end this new cycle I think about shows that are very keenly like unaware of how it's landing inside their own house.
DUBKE: That's exactly -- I mean, look, this is something he said how many years ago?
SIMMONS: 21 or 24.
DUBKE: Okay. CUPP: Two?
DUBKE: So, well, before he was elected. Well, before he was elected --
CUPP: He said it today again.
COLES: But he's just doubled down on that.
DUBKE: Exactly, exactly. So, this is where I'm going with this. He said this before he was elected to the United States Senate. But now he's doubling down. At some point in public life, you make mistakes. You say something wrong. And then how do you deal with that going forward?
PHILLIP: Not when you're Trump's running mate.
DUBKE: Well, that's -- I think you can. I actually do think that you can, but this is an area in which he really needs to figure out what his voice is and how he's going to do it.
But the real mistake for me was how they're handling it now, not the fact that he was trying to be funny in a weird way --
CUPP: To Tucker Carlson.
DUBKE: -- to Tucker Carlson years ago.
COLES: Tucker Carlson looks absolutely gobsmacked that he was saying this shit. It wasn't like Tucker was leaning in, which is sometimes --
PHILLIP: There's a cadre of the right that, you know, they believe that the population replacement is the most important thing and all the rest of us here on planet Earth, as to your point, know plenty of people who have kids and know that, by the grace of God, you know, they may not have had children and don't judge people for not having kids. Like that's just not a thing you do in 2024.
COLES: Well, 20 percent of women don't have children and 11 percent of women have tremendous difficulties having children. So, it's unclear who he's trying to speak to here.
SIMMONS: And God forbid we talk about the men, maybe like me, who waited until their 40s to have children, right? And so nobody worries about in this conversation about the fact that like people like George Washington didn't have any biological children of his own. He's not attacking him for someone who shouldn't have a say in American life.
And I think that's the part that he doesn't get, that people are making all kinds of choices in their lives that he's not actually representing when he's speaking up in public.
PHILLIP: All right. Everyone, hold on. We've got some weird conversations at the table here that is preoccupying everyone.
Coming up next, are Democrats rushing into their embrace of Kamala Harris? Here why one Trump ally is warning of the god-like status that is being befitted to her.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:34:25]
PHILLIP: Tonight, in a new interview, Trump ally Ben Carson is slamming Vice President Kamala Harris and warning that some may be trying to deify her. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BEN CARSON (R), FORMER 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is going to be a great test of the power of the media to take someone who formerly was universally disliked and transform them into a god-like figure. And they will use everything that they have to try to do that.
[22:35:00]
I know the media is going to do everything to make her seem like Martin Luther King in a different body, but I think people maybe are not going to be as easy to manipulate as that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Back with my panel and just to note, I mean, in the Republican Party currently, Donald Trump is the one who kind of gets the god-like status, right?
WELCH: For sure.
PHILLIP: But any validity to the point that he's making?
JOANA COLES, CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER, "THE DAILY BEAST: Well, I mean, what they're clearly trying to do is take the democratic arguments or take the arguments that Trump had risen Lazarus-like from the terrible assassination attempt on him, where he was being deified, where there were extraordinary religious images all over the RNC and use it against Kamala Harris.
And it seems very unlikely that it's going to stick because already you can see people saying, it's a sugar rush, it's going to end. And we're already seeing, you know, Republicans going on the attack in the most unpleasant ways. So I actually think Ben Carson's been slightly isolated from actually what's going on and he's coming in slightly off.
SIMMONS: Here's what we don't know. And I'm going to probably be a little bit more judicious than my friends in the Democratic Party would like.
The problem that the Democrats were having, as we talked about earlier, was that core Democrats weren't that excited about Joe Biden. Now what we've seen is core Democrats come over to Kamala Harris. And I think that is what has taken her back to an even standing.
But we're kind of at a 50-50 nation. This 47-48 kind of place where we are might be where we are. The question for the vice president is can she get from 47 or 48 to 51 percent, 50-plus percent in order to win this election in the right states?
And that's the thing that they're going to have to compete on for the next few months to get her over that next hump.
But what we don't know, and let's finish here, what we don't know is if the 170,000-ish people who were on this phone call, women, white women who were on this phone call the other night, are indicative of a larger trend that's happening in the country where it's not really about the issues. It's really about being anti-MAGA and wanting to defend their own freedoms and responsibilities.
DUBKE: Would it hurt you more if I said I agree with you? I thought that was really astute.
SIMMONS: It might hurt the producers.
DUBKE: I mean, they didn't just come over. They rushed over. I mean, I think a lot of what we've seen in this last week has been this rush over. Oh, thank God we're back in the game. Oh, my goodness, we actually might have a shot now.
And we're living with that. But, like, with most things in the media, and this isn't even with Republicans having this, she has been so built up by the media right now, I've got to believe next week we're going to see this little bit of, well, are we sure? Is she as godlike? Is she as special as we're all saying?
PHILLIP: First of all, just (inaudible) with the media attack. I just, I mean, is it the media, or is it that Democratic-based voters are responding to her? I mean, we know who the rest are. We have seen Kamala Harris when she's struggled in interviews and on the trail, but the voters right now are speaking.
SE CUPP, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: They are. I mean, the extent to which what Ben Carson is saying is true is only that she is for sure viewed as a savior to a party that was really struggling. I don't mean that in a religious sense. I mean, politically, saving this party from certain death. That will go away.
But there is that sense that she is here to save the party. I don't see any of, either from the media or from voters, this idea that she's messianic or some kind of MLK figure. I've not heard any of that.
PHILLIP: That seems a bit of a projection.
WELCH: Every time Ben Carson opens his mouth, he engages in ridiculous hyperbole. I once compiled all the things that he compared to Nazi Germany.
PHILLIP: He is a ridiculous person.
SIMMONS: Except for the brain surgery.
WELCH: I have incredibly gifted hands, as we all know. He's very, very hyperbolic. However, he has a point, and my friends in the media and my friends who are in the Democratic Party need to grapple with this point, and I know that they won't, or I fear that they won't, which is that there's a whole swath of America out there who feels like they have been systematically gaslit about Joe Biden and his age.
There have been segments. There have been people who work in this building who have written brow-beating things about the "New York Times", even polling on the issue of whether Biden is too old. That's pretty controversial, "New York Times." I'm not sure you should do that. It's in March of this year that between Robert Hur coming out and people such as Kamala Harris saying that Robert Hur's thing was clearly politically motivated, she said, and obviously inaccurate, she said that in February.
So to come off after all of this and then suddenly a bad debate, everything gets scrambled up, and then Kamala comes, and we see one week of flowing and gushing, yes, reflection of the euphoria that is real that people are experiencing. And I actually am happy that people are experiencing euphoria.
[22:40:00]
However, that feeling that the other people are experiencing is also real, which is that stop gaslighting us right now. And if you keep doing it, I've gotten emails from, you know, and I don't have -- I'm not a pro-Trump person at all from people who are saying if people keep doing this, I'm thinking about rage voting for Trump. That is a terrible outcome.
PHILLIP: Okay, so let's talk about, just for one second, I mean, the other part of this that I think is valid is that the record is going to get scrutinized, and one of the aspects of that is a clip like this one that was unearthed by The K-File here at CNN on defund the police.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Defund the police. The issue behind it is that we need to reimagine how we are creating safety. And when you have many cities that have one-third of their entire city budget focused on policing, we know that is not the smart way and the best way or the right way to achieve safety. This whole movement is about rightly saying we need to take a look at these budgets and figure out whether it reflects the right priorities. For too long, the status quo thinking has been you get more safety by putting more cops on the street. Well, that's wrong.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So there's nuance there, but the only thing Republicans are going to highlight is defund the police. That's it. It's not going to be nuanced at all, and that's going to be part of the campaign.
DUBKE: It's a campaign. It doesn't need to be nuanced. I mean, there is a contest here to be the leader of the free world. All this... It's been driving me crazy all week. Well, they're going to talk about a record, but they're going to just pick and choose the things that they want to talk about. Of course they are. Of course they are.
And the same thing is going to be said of the Democrats doing it to Donald Trump.
So this is a campaign. They are running hard against each other. There are rules to this. They are playing by the rules. They are talking about the issues.
And when we start talking about the issues, which, oh, we're day five now of Harris being in the race. So finally, we've got one thing on defund the police that the media is putting out. CNN, day five. This is what I was talking about earlier. We're going to start looking at her and start looking at what she did on immigration, where she was in the Biden-Harris administration on inflationary policies, on Israel. We're starting to talk about Israel with the meeting with Netanyahu. So the issues and the policies that matter should be discussed.
CUPP: Here's the thing. If you're explaining you're losing, and when it comes to defund the police, if you're going to say now, and she hasn't addressed this now, but some people around her have. If you're going to say, well, what she really meant was reprioritizing the budget and talking about the way we think about safety.
I mean, you're losing. You're losing. When you talk about whether she was the border czar, if you're going to say, well, she wasn't actually the border czar. What she really did was this more diplomatic role, and she was meant to just address this one. You're losing. You're explaining.
You either disavow or you embrace. Now, I don't think it would be politically wise to embrace defund the police or failed border policy. So what you have to say is my position on defund the police has evolved. Upon reflection, I think that that's a bad policy, but we should talk about ways to address policing.
When it comes to the border, I wasn't in charge of it. I was the point person. I did the best I could, and without Congress, my hands were tied. When I'm elected, I will push Congress to do it. That's it.
PHILLIP: This is why interviews will start to matter once they start to happen.
CUPP: Yes.
DUBKE: When they start to happen.
PHILLIP: Everyone, stick around for us. We've got more ahead. Democrats have had a lot of strong words to say about Donald Trump and his allies, but the newest bit is weird. You heard it a lot at the table tonight. The question is, is it effective? We're going to discuss it. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:48:18] PHILLIP: You're probably at this point used to hearing heavy adjectives from Democrats when it comes to Donald Trump. Evil, racist, a threat to democracy. But now, listen to what they're saying.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. TIM WALTZ (D-MN): These guys are just weird. They're running for He-Man Women Haters Club or something.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: My panel is back. There was a lot of weird going on at this table, but that is the word of the moment. And the question is, why? What is behind the use of weird as opposed to Donald Trump is an existential threat to American democracy and the country is going to come to an end if he's re-elected?
SIMMONS: You just did it right there. 16 words instead of one. Listen, I think what Democrats have not done a good job at lately is speaking very plainly to the American people about what it is they mean and using words the American people mean. This is what is beneficial of Vice President Harris.
She's younger, she's got nieces who are kind of in the culture and they are very adept in social media. She can carry off something like weird, probably in a way that President Biden would have had a little tougher. He would not have been his resident if he said it himself.
COLES: I'm not sure he would have been able to remember it, to be fair. It's also a very good hashtag, which is also how I think slogans and our political campaigns are having to be run, that you can easily hashtag it. And also, it really appeals to young people. It's just very easy to understand in a way that -- well, it's just emotionally incredibly effective.
PHILLIP: It's weird, creepy is another word they've been using to describe Trump and fans. I was just looking at my email. The Harris campaign sent out an email calling Trump's speech tonight strange.
[22:50:00]
It also just happens to be how regular people talk to one another as opposed to press release speak.
COLES: Well, and I think people are bored actually about the whole scolding of this is the end of democracy. It's exhausting and people don't necessarily believe it, but they also don't want to vote for someone who seems weird.
It's like you don't want to sit next to someone in high school who's weird. You don't want to be with the weird person on the bus. You want to stay away from them.
And definitely Donald Trump and certainly J.D. Vance are now both reading as weird. And I actually think also Kamala's family with her stepchildren now seems much more. It's a modern family, so to go after her for being childless as we talked earlier about J.D. Vance doing seems very old fashioned.
And Trump now himself, especially after the sort of lack of connection with Melania at the RNC, seems lonely. And he seems isolated and he seems on his own. And that feeds into being weird.
PHILLIP: I have to say there's a hat trick that has happened here. Kamala Harris is now brat for her quirkiness. Donald Trump is weird. That's a pretty good like flip of the --
WELCH: I don't know if you get to accept that.
PHILLIP: I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that's what the kids are saying. I'm not sure my 16 year old is saying that either.
SIMMONS: The one thing that was brilliant about Donald Trump with the name calling, even though it was juvenile, the name calling, it touched on something that you kind of thought about someone. It was like, he's nailing something. I don't really like to talk about it.
That's the thing about weird and strange. It's something people might already feel about what they're saying and it just names it for them and gives them an easy moniker.
DUBKE: This is the second round this week of them throwing names. So earlier in the week it was he's afraid. Donald Trump is afraid to debate. I'll say scaredly cat for J.D. Vance. He is -- he doesn't want to-- he doesn't like going up against a tough woman. He's so scared to do this. So they tried that earlier in the week. Now we have weird later in the week. I think from a communications standpoint everyone here at the table is right.
It's really a smart way to frame the debate and it does when you can touch and pick at one thing that people are thinking about it makes a difference. So that from that is smart. But it is again. This is where I come back to. They are both running to lead the free world in the United States.
This is a knock down drag out fight and they're both throwing punches and they're both going.
PHILLIP: It's going to take a lot more than a few buzzwords to win this election. Everyone hang on for us. Coming up next the panel gives us their night caps. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:57:26]
PHILLIP: And we're back and it's time for the NewsNight cap. You each have 30 seconds to say your piece. Jamal, you're up first.
SIMMONS: Well today we had the endorsement that everybody was waiting for of Barack Obama, of Vice President Harris. The surprise though was that Michelle Obama was on the call and that's really a surprise right now because she hasn't really been participating in the Joe Biden campaign. But Michelle Obama has entered the chat. She's the most popular person on the call. The fifth most popular public figure in America. She's never dropped below 60 percent in her polls. She's somebody I think everybody was waiting to hear from.
PHILLIP: Vivek Ramaswamy tells us she'll be on the ticket next.
DUBKE: What replacing J.D. Vance? And that is not my night cap for tonight. My night cap for tonight is that this was a good week for democracy. And it sounds strange coming from a Republican talking about a backroom deal by Democratic power brokers to replace a failed candidate with somebody who actually has a shot at winning.
But if we're factual about this the Democratic primary was a joke. It was more of a coronation.
And now we actually have a contest. We have a real contest. The polls are tight and we have a basic face off for the American people between a party that believes in individual freedom and one that wants more government in your lives. So let the contest begin.
PHILLIP: Let the voters speak. S.E.?
CUPP: My night cap is about Cracker Barrel because Cracker Barrel is in decline. The CEO came out today and sort of laid out a plan of how to attract younger consumers. They're going to freshen up the decor. They're introducing a new menu.
This is important believe it or not because of the Cracker Barrel versus Whole Foods political phenomenon. And there is a long history of voting behavior being reflected in how many counties have a Whole Foods versus Cracker Barrel.
It impacts presidential elections but also down ballot races. And this has been tracked and polled for a very long time with a good degree of accuracy. So the question is does the decline in Cracker Barrel reflect a decline in Republican politics or does this just mean that the phenomenon is sort of breaking apart?
PHILLIP: Cracker Barrel is trying to get back in the game.
DUBKE: The underrated part of this political dynamic that may have changed this week which is in 2016 5.7 percentage points, percent of the country voted for third parties or independent presidential candidates. In 2020 that was 1.8. It just cut by two thirds. So where did those 3 million people go?
[23:00:03]
They voted predominantly for Joe Biden. If you look at Donald Trump, he's going to get 46 percent by a little less than 47 percent no matter what. Those voters went there after Biden was inaugurated. All of those voters immediately soured on Joe Biden. They became double haters. Kamala Harris might have attracted some of those double haters to come back to the tent as you were saying before.
PHILLIP: Quick last word for Joanna. COLES: Well I'm obsessed by a report we have in the Beast today that
Melania's memoir finally is coming out in September. You can pre-order it now and if you want a signed copy it will cost $150.
PHILLIP: Alright everybody get your checkbooks out. Thank you for being here at the table, and thank you for watching "NewsNight: State of the Race." "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
